She Came From Beyond!: A Novel - Hardcover

Darling, Nadine

3.4

189 ratings by Goodreads

9781468311525: She Came From Beyond!: A Novel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1468311522 ISBN 13: 9781468311525

Publisher: The Overlook Press, 2015

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Easy Hardwick has it made. At just about thirty, she’s got a tumbledown cottage in small-town Oregon and an uncomplicated acting gig as the space-babe eye candy on a sci-fi parody show. She spends her downtime online, bickering with fans and fellow culture vultures about film trivia and relishing her minor-but-satisfying celebrity.Enter Harrison. What begins as a jocular online flirtation spills into a messy IRL affair, and Easy finds herself pregnant with twins and sharing her home with the love of her life...plus the teenage daughter, baby son, and slightly unhinged, soon-to-be-ex wife she kind of didn’t totally know he had.Easy may play a space ditz in hot-pants on TV, but her voice is restlessly intelligent, negotiating the absurdities of a world lived onscreen and online and striving to make sense of heady problems: love affairs, ex-wives, teen girls, eating disorders, and whether cannibalistic flies count as zombies. Like the captive great white shark that sets Easy’s story in motion, Nadine Darling’s writing has got teeth. Her pointed, precise dialogue, empathetic insights, and live-wire observations elevate this novel from zany domestic drama to outlandish comic masterpiece. She Came From Beyond! is an audacious, fresh debut from a writer to watch.Recognized as one of "35 Debut Authors Over 35"

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About the Author:

Nadine Darling lives in Boston with her family. She Came From Beyond! is her first novel.

Review:

“Hugely funny, dark, biting, with prose that soars . . . If Lorrie Moore were a huge goddamn nerd, she'd write a book like this.”
- Glen Weldon, NPR panelist and author of Superman: The Unauthorized Biography

“So original―the words picaresque, macabre, quirky, farcical and wacky come to mind―that [Nadine Darling] can be said to have invented a genre that we should call Comic Confessional as Alternative to Suicide.“She Came From Beyond!” is extremely depressing comedy of the best sort. Ms. Darling’s voice, peppered with hilarious pop-culture references, is so right that each sentence is a perfect little confection of wry wordcraft emanating from a wise and deeply disturbed place that combines the spirit of the Chuckles the Clown episode of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” with the moment in “Schindler’s List” when Liam Neeson realizes that he could have saved more Jews. I loved it so much that I had to lobotomize myself before I read it a second time to make sure I wouldn’t know what would happen next. ”
- John Bloom, author of Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story, Wall Street Journal

“Very funny . . . An involving story that brings together the important things in life―love, romance, family, parenthood, and obscure pop culture references.”
- Frank Conniff, writer and actor, Mystery Science Theater 3000

“Newcomer Nadine Darling drops an unforgettable stylistic beat from page one and continues upping the stakes thereafter. She Came From Beyond! is a hilariously touching ode to nerds and our culture, but more importantly, it’s an honest and heartfelt tribute to the always eccentric human condition.”
- Internationally bestselling author Lyndsay Faye who got every nerd reference in this book and watches way too much Star Trek, and wrote the Edgar-nominated Timothy Wilde trilogy

“Nadine Darling’s She Came From Beyond! is a muscle of a novel. Don’t be fooled by the title or by the narrator’s couldn’t-care-less attitude. This beast of a book―sometimes about motherhood and daughterhood, always about the all-round strangeness of family―is coming straight for your heart.”
- Hannah Pittard, author of Reunion and The Fates Will Find Their Way

“Early in Nadine Darling’s She Came From Beyond!, protagonist Easy Hardwick says she feels like ‘the star of a house fire.’ She’s not wrong, and she doesn’t come out unscathed, but she is one heck of a star, house fire or not. Dramatic, selfish yet genuine, and funny, really funny, Easy will carry you through the wildest book I’ve read in years.”
- Sarah Blake, author of Mr. West

“Darling entertains with a dry, witty humor that results in an amusing and zany romp.”
- Booklist

“[A] wild romp of a novel . . . I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying this novel so far and Nadine Darling’s style is something fresh, original, and so much fun.”
- Lithub

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